Does the Flaneur have it in
for Chancellor Dirks?
How appalling can UC Berkeley get? Really?
A course had already gotten under way this semester that was part of the "DeCal" curriculum which are courses supervised by faculty taught by students.
It's title: "Palestine: A Settler Colonial Analysis."
Approved by Academic Committee on Courses of Instruction it was on perfectly legitimate grounds for discourse and had all the academic rigor regarding intellectual objectivity.
But a group of Jewish organizations associated with "AMCHA" decided to put a stop to it.
It seems open discussion of a fifty year military occupation resulting in poverty, humiliation and brutal denial of human rights to Palestinians climaxing in criminal wars underwritten with our taxes and without our informed consent
is not open to discussion at our nation's leading public university.
is not open to discussion at our nation's leading public university.
Not only did did chief cook and fund-raiser Dirks cancel the course on the flimsiest of picayune procedural pretexts but, to quote an editorial in the otherwise acquiescent Daily Cal:
"The chancellor's department chose to first deliver their written decision not to the student instructor, nor to the faculty supervisor, nor to the department sponsoring the course, nor even to the Academic Senate which had approved the course (and heard about the decision hours later)
but to a group of 43 Jewish organizations."
Tasting blood the Jewish organizations now may have in their sights faculty, the Ethnic Studies department and the Academic Senate itself.
When I asked in my last Dirks column why the administration would go out of its way to bring in a new far-right law professor to shore up the ultra-rightist John Yoo,
I already knew the reason: he's Koch-connected.
That means plenty of visible and invisible funding from the wealthy right wing.
And now Sheldon Adelson can ring up Dirks and black ball
oh, a professor, a subject, any criticism of Zionism
or American Jewish influence
Nietzsche said something to effect that if you want to find out who actually rules you,
look who you are not allowed to criticize.
And then the logical follow-up occurred.
Interested parties who oppose this state of affairs circulated and posted a flyer in protest. It sounds absolutely in the tradition of the early patriot broadsides and of the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley--the actual one not the hollowed-out phony one campus administrators routinely and fatuously invoke.
Interested parties who oppose this state of affairs circulated and posted a flyer in protest. It sounds absolutely in the tradition of the early patriot broadsides and of the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley--the actual one not the hollowed-out phony one campus administrators routinely and fatuously invoke.
Dan Mogulof campus spokesman goes off like a Blue Meanie alarm-sentry treating the flyer as if it was anti-Semitic screed amounting to hate speech. Nowhere are we allowed to see the text of it and judge for ourselves but instead we are treated to a war-on-terror alarmism and trumped-up concern about unauthorized posting and the supposed damage it does to campus.
Jewish faculty spokesman guard against the obvious criticism of this skullduggery by
stating that Jewish students shouldn't have to defend their claims that someone else's speech is offensive and objectionable or what they mean by their experiences, that would be putting them on trial. We put you on trial, you don't put us on trial.
"Asking Jews to defend their claims that they've been subjected to anti-Semitism or explain what they mean by their experiences places them in the dock"--Professor John Efron
Jews have a right to censor your free speech no explanation required.
All criticism of Israel is per force anti-Semitic.
And the only two putatively objectionable statements that we are provided from the flyer:
"The posters allege that the Jewish community inhibits free speech on campus and reference the United States' recent deal to give Israel $38 billion in military and money over the next ten years"
Daily Cal
Then down below Dirks' photo (as seen above)
on the front page of "the Monarch of the College Dailies"
"EATING BERKELEY
Soft-poached eggs on toast
Poached eggs may be greatly
loved, but many people fear
preparing this most perfect
breakfast meal. Follow Eating
Berkeley's instructions online
and enter egg heaven"
28 September 2016
